. . . There are other ways; we know the way
to make the other choice for death: unformed
or broken, less than whole, puzzled, we live
in a formless world. Endless, we hope for no end.
I tell you death, expect no smile of pride
from me. I bring you nothing in my empty hands.

— William Bronk (1918-1999)"The Smile on the Face of a Kouros,"
Life Supports: New & Collected Poems;
originally published in The Empty Hands (1969)

1782 -- US: During the Revolutionary War, a US militia troop attacks Christian Indians of the Delaware Nation in their villages on western Pennsylvania's Tuscarawas River. The Indians declared themselves neutral in the war against the British. During the attack, the Indians stand their ground but take no defense. Assured no harm will befall them, the Indians allow themselves to be rounded up.

The soldiers know the Indians are peaceful, but this does not stop them from killing more than 100 men & women. Eyewitness David Zeisberger describes the Indians:

"They prayed & sang until the tomahawks struck into their heads. The bodies were burned together with the houses."

The Pennsylvania assembly will investigate & condemn the massacre, but will take no action against the soldiers or their commanders.

1861 -- CSA: Confederate troops fire the first shot of the Civil War against Fort Sumter, South Carolina.

The Union commander of the fort had offered to surrender in two days, when his food supply was due to run out. But the Southern officers refused to allow the delay, fearing, as one later admitted, that Abraham Lincoln & Jefferson Davis would settle their differences amicably, & the chance of war would slip away forever.

1871 -- France: DECREE OF THE COMMUNE TO DEMOLISH THE VENDOME COLUMN:

"The Paris Commune, considering that the Imperial Column in the Place Vendôme is a monument of barbarism, a symbol of brute force & false glory, an affirmation of militarism, a denial of international law, a permanent insult directed at the conquered by their conquerors, a perpetual attack upon one of the three great principles of the French republic, decrees that the column in the Place Vendome "shall be demolished."

This decree, passed today, is carried out May 16, 1871. Photos of the Column having been pulled down can be found in various books. (The column was brought by Napoleon from his Egypt campaign.)

A few years later, in 1879, when the Commune was still recent enough that a reference to this event would be recognized, Mark Twain closed his "Some Remarks on the Science of Onanism" with these words:

"...in concluding, I say, 'If you must gamble away your
lives sexually, don't play a Lone Hand too much.' When you
feel a revolutionary uprising in your system, get your
Vendome Column down some other way — don't jerk it down."

1893 -- US: "Michael Gold" lives. Pseudonym for Itzok Isaac Granich, born 12 April 1893 (not 1894, as he sometimes erroneously stated) in New York's Lower East Side Jewish ghetto to immigrant parents.

Hard-line Stalinist, cultural commissar of the American Communist Party, perhaps the best of this school of writing. Best-known novel is Jews Without Money. Editor of The Liberator & a joint editor, with John Sloan, of the New Masses.

Gold so nettled Hemingway with repeated broadside denunciations of him in his Daily Worker column that he stormed into the paper's office demanding to see Gold, who was out of the office. The receptionist asked if there were a message.

'OK,' said the famous author, 'tell Mike Gold that Ernest Hemingway says he should go fuck himself.'

The song was written in 1931 during a strike by the United Mine Workers of America. During this strike, the sheriff, J.H. Blair, led his gang of thugs on a violent rampage, beating & murdering union leaders. They found themselves at the Reece's home, looking for her husband Sam, where Florence was alone with the children. The men ransacked the house to no avail. While Florence waited inside for her husband, she wrote the song on an old wall calendar.

1900 -- Puerto Rico: American Empire begins in earnest as the island is surrendered to the US military authority. Today, the Foraker Law (Organic Act of 1900) is approved, establishing civil government & "free" commerce between the island & US. Remains one of America's many colonies in the new millennium.

Maura is wounded in yet another attempt in 1910 by the anarchist Manuel Possa. The Maura government was finally toppled because of the scandal & protests throughout Spain & abroad because of the government murder of Francisco Ferrer.

1904 -- US: During this month Emma Goldman seeks to extend her influence beyond the immigrant community by exposing a broader American audience to anarchism. She lectures in Philadelphia on "The Tragedy of Woman's Emancipation." Her first attempts to deliver her lecture is stalled by Officer Friendlies, but public support for free speech gains her eventual success in delivering the lecture.

1906 -- Spain: Francisco Ferrer, Spanish anarchist educational theorist & teacher, continues to test the tolerance of Spanish authorities & clerics by organizing a massive demonstration today, Good Friday, in support of secular education. The government & Catholic Church are quite exercised & leap at the chance to jail him on false charges in June (for over a year).

Alexandre Marius Jacob (1879-1954), the anarchiste bandit credited with over 150 burglaries, is the original "Arsene Lupin" in the French detective novels of Maurice Leblanc, with only slight exaggerations which made him a sensational "fictional" character.

1908 -- US: A fire that began in a dump in the Chelsea section of Boston, Massachusetts spread through the community & ignites oil tanks on the Chelsea Creek, eventually rendering 17,000 people homeless.

Cochon, a tapestry maker, anarchiste & very popular secretary of the "Federation of Tenants," declared war on "Mister Vulture" (the landlords). He helped the evicted move, as well as take over unoccupied housing.

1916 -- Beverly Cleary lives, author of Ramona children's books.

1918 -- Russia: Moscow headquarters of the anarchists surrounded & attacked by Bolshevik troops. For the past two days Cheka, the Bolshevik secret police has carried out raids on Moscow anarchist groups & making arrests. Very similar to what happens to anarchists, radical & labor activists in the US during this period.

"At last the Soviet government, with an iron broom, has rid Russia of Anarchism."

— Leon Trotsky, who prepared the military action against the anarchists

Apparently Snowball missed a few; given all the current Russian & other anarchist groups in the former USSR.
[Details / context]

Also an Immigration officer interrogates Emma Goldman in prison. Following the visit, the Bureau of Immigration determines there are no legal barriers to Goldman's deportation. Anthony Caminetti, Commissioner General of the Bureau of Immigration, pursues a policy for allowing her deportation.

Socialist Kate Richards O'Hare joins Goldman in prison, getting her very own cell at the Jefferson City, Mo., penitentiary.

On Sept. 14, 1918, Judge D. C. Westenhauer issued his sentence, sending Debs to prison for ten years. An appeal by Debs to the US Supreme Court failed & in April 1919 he entered the Moundsville, West Virginia, state prison (which housed some federal detainees) to begin serving his jail term.

"I would no more teach children military training than I would teach them arson, robbery, or assassination."

1933 -- Moffett Field is commissioned. Becomes infamous playground for the Navy.

1934 -- Elechi Amadi lives. Nigerian novelist, dramatist, & educator, from an Ibo family in the Delta region of Eastern Nigeria. Like other Nigerian writers, including Wole Soyinka, Chinua Achebe, John Okigbo, John Pepper Clark, & Cole Omotso, he attended the University College of Ibadan. His first novel was The Concubine (1966).

1934 -- F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender Is the Night is published, but the novel about rich expatriates is unenthusiastically received during the Great Depression. http://www.sc.edu/fitzgerald/index.html

1935 -- US: 150,000 college students across the country stage the first nationwide student strike against war. The protest is against participation in any war.

During its peak years, from spring 1936 to spring 1939, the movement mobilized at least 500,000 collegians (about half of the American student body) in annual one-hour strikes against war.

1966 -- Jan Berry, half of the hitmaking surf-rock vocal duo Jan & Dean, runs his Corvette into an parked truck on L.A.'s Whittier Boulevard. Berry suffers total physical paralysis for over a year as well as extensive brain damage which makes it nearly impossible to return to performing. They do give it a try in 1973 but it is a fiasco.

1966 -- US: NY Stock Exchange anti-Vietnam War leafleting.

1967 -- US: 1,500 march down the Ave. in Seattle's U-District protesting the Vietnam War.

1968 -- Frank Zappa & the Mothers of Invention perform at the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences Dinner in New York City:

Zappa looks down at the audience & declares the event "a load of pompous hokum...All year long you people have manufactured this crap, now for one night you're gonna have to listen to it!"
Zappa later remarks, "We played the ugliest shit we could ... That's what they expected us to play."

The 'Events of May 1968' in France begins in November 1996 with students who were demanding the 'internationale situationniste,' taking control of the leadership of the association of students in Strasbourg.

In February an anti-Vietnam committee organizes a counter-demonstration against supporters of US Vietnam policy, resulting in violent exchanges with the police. Also incidents at universities throughout France by students demanding freedom of speech & movement & late in the month the Minister of Education announces a limited liberalization of access to universities. Too little, too late.

By May the country is in the throes of revolution, led by students & workers, & the government totters on the brink of collapse.

1971 -- US: Women's peace march on the Pentagon, Washington, DC. 90-year-old Jeanette Rankin, the first US Congresswoman & only member of to vote against US entry to both World Wars, leads 8,000 in protest of the Vietnam War. http://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/vietnam.html

1971 -- France: First European anti-nuclear power demonstration, Fessenheim.

1975 -- In Tony Hillerman's novel Finding Moon, Moon Mathias, small-town American newspaper editor with a chequered past, finds today is destined to become the first day of a completely new take on life...

His brother is killed in a helicopter crash in Cambodia.

1980 -- At Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader President Carter's request, the US Olympic Committee votes not to attend the Moscow Summer Olympics in retaliation for the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. If other countries took this moral high ground every time the US invaded a country there would be no games.

1980 -- Puerto Rico: Total blackout of the entire island, & the abduction of the Operations Manager of a power plant occur on the same day.

1981 -- The world's first recyclable spacecraft, the Space Shuttle Columbia, goes into space. It completed a successful mission two days later.

1988 -- Bill Gates?: Harvard University patents gene-altered mouse.

1989 --

Abbie Hoffman, Yippie peace activist of the 60's, dies at 52.

Commits suicide.

A Chicago Seven radical who founded the Yippie movement once tossed dollar bills onto the floor of the American Stock Exchange to disrupt business. It worked. Near-riot in the mad $cramble for free buckaroonies.

Daily Bleed Patron Saint 2008 Yippie!!!

1990 -- Singer James Brown is released from a South Carolina jail on work furlough after serving 15 months of a six-year sentence for various drug charges.

1993 -- England: Fascist violence in London against the 121 Centre anarchist bookstore.

From a flyer: "On the night of April 12, an attempt was made to burn down the 121 Centre. 121 has been open for several years as a drop-in & advice center, with a cafe & bookshop. The 121 collective has been involved in local housing & poll tax campaigns, as well as struggles against police violence & council corruption. They have consistently opposed fascism & racism." 121 Railton Rd, Brixton, SE24 London, England (ph 071 274 6655)."

"Well, for all intents & purposes Seattle stiffed at the Sunday AG remembrance. I wasn't at either the Anne Waldman remembrance on Friday in Auburn nor at the Ted Joans reading in the U District on Saturday at Recollection Used Books, but the Blue Moon Tavern was pretty much a ghost town on Sunday. Just goes to show that no matter how much you can try & do with the wonders of email & the net/web with only a few days notice it doesn't guarantee ANYthing. I tried."

She was married to the anarchist - Wobbly - typesetter Dick Ellington, who is credited with the term FIJAGH, & fanzine of the same name. They met in New York as Science Fiction fans in the 1950s. After they moved to California, she was a contributor to "Femizine", a fanzine put out by the hoax fan Joan W. Carr (H.P.Sanderson).

2002 -- Venezuela: Two day vacation for Beloved & Respected Comrade President Hugo Chávez in the Coup d'état Islands as Venezuelan Chamber of Commerce upstart Pedro Carmona & his military pals immediately repeal the constitution, dissolve the supreme court & parliament. Chávez returns to power on the 14th.

2004 --
US: Emma Goldman's "life," according to PBS television. Unfortunately a real yawner with the life drained out & the last 20 years of her militant activity, including her involvement in the Spanish Revolution of 1936, nonexistent. watch the promohttp://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/goldman/

2010 -- Chile: The Vatican’s Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, dubbed the Deputy Pope, claims it is homosexuality, not celibacy, that is linked to pedophilia. Vatican #2, seeking to defuse the sex scandal battering the Roman Catholic Church, does a real good job.

3000 --

"There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest."